Israeli Ethno-Religious Differences in Motherhood Penalties on Employment and Earnings

Abstract

Israeli society presents a unique context for studying motherhood’s impacts on employment and earnings: High fertility and marriage rates coincide with high rates of women’s education and employment. While past research finds low motherhood penalties in Israel, ethno-religious group differences in these penalties are unexplored. Ours is the first longitudinal study to examine simultaneously motherhood’s employment and wage penalties among Israeli ethno-religious groups. Using newly available panel data, we find that motherhood deters employment among Israeli-Palestinians more strongly than among Jews, and particularly among less-educated Israeli-Palestinians. Similarly, motherhood wage penalties and ethno-religious disparities are greatest among the least-educated women. For all groups, highly educated women incur smaller motherhood penalties in employment and earnings, and in some cases receive motherhood wage premiums. Public-sector employment, particularly for Muslims, is associated with higher postnatal employment, lower motherhood penalties, and motherhood premiums among the highly educated. The stronger enforcement of anti-discrimination and work–family policies in the public sector, along with its schoolteachers’ collective bargaining agreement that raises maternal earnings, may contribute to its more positive outcomes for Israeli-Palestinian mothers. Our findings suggest that increasing educational attainment and public-sector employment among Israeli-Palestinians may reduce ethno-religious inequality in motherhood’s impact on employment and earnings.

Keywords

work–family race/ethnicity inequality stratification and mobility education demography/population religion

Across industrialized countries, the majority of working-age women participate in the labor force, yet women remain the primary caregivers for children. Given that workplaces reward “ideal workers” with few non-work responsibilities (Acker 1990), combining mothering with employment can be difficult. Mothers, especially those with young children, encounter barriers to full-time employment and advancement (e.g., Aisenbrey, Evertsson, and Grunow 2009), and a wage penalty for motherhood is widely documented in industrialized countries (e.g., Abendroth, Huffman, and Treas 2014; Aisenbrey and Fasang 2017; Budig and England 2001; Budig and Hodges 2010; Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007; Gangl and Ziefle 2009; Glauber 2007). Part of this wage penalty is attributable to employment interruptions surrounding a birth (Budig and England 2001), and experimental research documents employer discrimination against mothers in hiring and wage offers (Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007).

Importantly, opportunities for women to maintain employment and regulation of employers’ treatment of new mothers are shaped by work–family policies (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2016; Gash 2009; Halldén, Levanon, and Kricheli-Katz 2016; Misra, Budig, and Boeckmann 2011; Sigle-Rushton and Waldfogel 2007). Studies show that cross-national differences in motherhood employment and pay penalties are correlated with work–family social policies (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2016; Evertsson, Grunow, and Aisenbrey 2016; Keck and Saraceno 2013; Mandel and Semyonov 2006; Misra, Budig, and Boeckmann 2011; Stier, Lewin-Epstein, and Braun 2001). Israel has generous work–family policies and unusually high rates of women’s education, marriage, fertility, and maternal employment.¹ However, these rates, along with earnings and work–family policy usage, differ among ethno-religious groups and reflect striking economic inequality between Israeli Jews and the Israeli-Palestinian groups (Okun 2013). Israeli-Palestinians experience fewer employment opportunities and lower labor force participation, relative to Jews. In addition, motherhood lowers employment more strongly among minority groups and may create greater selection into employment. Higher selection into employment for Israeli-Palestinian mothers, in turn, may result in lower observed motherhood wage penalties. Thus, a contribution of our study is our investigation of the conflicting impacts of motherhood among ethno-religious groups on two outcomes: employment and earnings.

Our study is the first using longitudinal panel data to explore Israeli ethno-religious group differences in the impact of children on employment and earnings. Specifically, we investigate (1) differences by ethno-religious group in the duration of labor force absence after a birth and (2) ethno-religious group differences in the motherhood wage penalty, net of postnatal labor force interruptions, human capital, and other factors. Due to education’s potential to reduce employment disparities among ethno-religious groups, we examine motherhood’s effects by three levels of educational attainment. Furthermore, due to the greater opportunities and protections afforded to Israeli-Palestinians in the public sector, we distinguish by sector of employment. We use Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) data to follow a cohort of young workers longitudinally, from 1995 through 2017.

Background on Motherhood and Employment Outcomes

The theoretical mechanisms producing motherhood’s impact on employment and on earnings are related. Below we describe the Israeli context of ethno-religious inequality and consider how it relates to the mechanisms that shape motherhood’s effects on employment and earnings. Specifically, we explore the gendered construction of jobs and workplace characteristics, individual human capital and labor supply, productivity and employer discrimination, and work–family policies. We conclude by outlining expectations for our analysis.

Motherhood, Inequality, and the Israeli Context

Past research shows that motherhood’s impacts on employment and earnings vary by ethnic/racial group differences in the United States (Aisenbrey and Fasang 2017; Florian 2018; Lu, Wang, and Han 2017; Van winkle and Fasang 2020). For example, in the United States majority-group women (white) are more likely to reduce hours or exit the labor force after a childbirth and incur larger motherhood wage penalties, relative to minority women (Black, Hispanic, and Asian women) (Budig and England 2001; Glauber 2007; Greenman 2011; Parrott 2014).

Building on these intersectional analyses, we examine how social locations defined by ethno-religious group and educational attainment shape motherhood and employment outcomes. Although past studies find smaller motherhood penalties in Israel, compared with other industrialized countries (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2012; Herzberg-Druker 2014; Kricheli-Katz, Mandel, and Kriya 2018), no studies have investigated these penalties among Israeli ethno-religious subgroups. We consider how socioeconomic inequality may combine with the mechanisms producing motherhood penalties to create divergent outcomes for ethno-religious groups.

In Israel, Jews are the largest (75 percent of the population) and most socioeconomically privileged group,² compared with Israeli-Palestinians (including Palestinians from Eastern Jerusalem). Of Israeli-Palestinians groups, Muslims compose the largest share (83.2 percent) and are the most disadvantaged group, followed by Christians (9.2 percent) and other minority groups (7.6 percent)³ (CBS 2017).

Relevant to our study, marriage, fertility, employment, and earnings patterns differ among Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian women. For example, Muslim women marry the youngest and have the highest fertility (20.9 years and 3.32 children, respectively), compared with Christian women (22.8 years and 2.19 children), and Jewish women (24.5 years and 3.09 children) (CBS 2016). Women’s labor force participation rates differ by ethno-religious group: Among women ages 25–54 years in 2015, 86 percent of Jewish women were in the labor force, compared with Christian (45 percent) and Muslim (25 percent) women (Kraus and Yonay 2018). Similarly, earnings gaps are large, with the highest earnings among Jewish women and the lowest among Muslim women (Kraus and Yonay 2018).

Israeli-Palestinians, particularly Muslims, experience high levels of job segregation, unemployment, and poverty relative to Jews (Haberfeld and Cohen 2007; Khattab and Miaari 2013; Kraus and Yonay 2018; G. Levanon and Raviv 2007; Okun and Friedlander 2005).⁴ Residential segregation reduces employment opportunities for Israeli-Palestinians, largely limiting them to public-sector employment and co-ethnic entrepreneurship, particularly following a labor market absence (Yonay and Kraus 2001). Remote Muslim communities offer limited employment opportunities and lower-quality schooling (Yiftachel 2006; Yonay and Kraus 2001). Consequently, Muslim women have low educational attainment, with less than one-third attaining postsecondary credentials, compared with more than one-half of Jewish women. Relative to Muslims, Christians’ socioeconomic is somewhat stronger: Christians are more urbanized, experience less job segregation, and have greater access to private (mostly church-run) schools (Kraus and Yonay 2018; McGahern 2011). Church-run private schools produce moderate educational attainment among Christian women. Given these disparate community and socioeconomic resources among ethno-religious groups, we next consider their relation to the mechanisms that produce motherhood disparities in employment and earnings.

Workplace and Worker Characteristics

A fundamental explanation for the negative association between motherhood and employment outcomes is Joan Acker’s (1990) seminal argument about the gendered construction of jobs and workplaces. According to Acker, workplace policies and practices hire and reward “ideal workers” who can devote themselves to work and have few non-work responsibilities. Thus, workers with childcare responsibilities find employment difficult to maintain, particularly when supportive work–family policies are lacking (Budig 2003; Goldin 2014; Keck and Saraceno 2013; Lu, Wang, and Han 2017). Indeed, women with higher burdens of care—those with younger children and larger families—are less likely to work full time (Budig 2003; Goldin 2014; Keck and Saraceno 2013; Lu, Wang, and Han 2017). In Israel, this negative association between family size and employment is strong among Israeli-Palestinian women (Kraus and Yonay 2018), though weak among Jewish women (Kraus 2002). This may point to Jewish women’s greater resources and access to childcare, whereas the underfunding of social and educational services in Israeli-Palestinian communities reduces their access to public childcare (Kraus and Yonay 2018).

The difficulty of maintaining employment and full-time hours after a birth shapes the motherhood wage penalty. The motherhood wage penalty is the negative effect of children on women’s pay net of covariates (Anderson, Binder, and Krause 2003; Budig and England 2001; Budig and Hodges 2010; Glauber 2007; Parrott 2014). Employment breaks and reduced hours after childbirth lower mothers’ cumulative work experience, therein lowering wages for mothers (Budig and England 2001). Like job experience, education is negatively related to the size of the motherhood penalty (Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2005; Doren 2019). In many countries, educational attainment increases women’s access to job opportunities, family-friendly workplaces (Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2005), and levels of job autonomy that facilitate integration of work and caring responsibilities (Yu and Kuo 2017). The higher earnings that education confers raise women’s capacity to purchase non-familial childcare and domestic services (Gonalons-Pons 2015). Indeed, college-educated women who delay motherhood until their mid-30s earn a wage premium for children (Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2005; Doren 2019). Although postsecondary education is rare among Israeli-Palestinians, it may strongly moderate the relationships among motherhood, employment, and earnings for Israeli-Palestinians, given their generally reduced access to employment, high-wage jobs, and childcare. For example, high educational attainment may interrupt employer implicit bias against Muslims and Christians by giving evidence of job-relevant knowledge, qualifications, and skills. Given the limited employment opportunities and low wages Israeli-Palestinian women face in the labor market, the impact of education on employment and earnings may be stronger than among Jewish women. Similarly, education facilitates employment among mothers and reduces the wage penalty: Past research shows that mothers with high levels of education, earnings, and job experience are less likely to interrupt employment around a birth (Gangl and Ziefle 2009; Pertold-Gebicka, Pertold, and Gupta 2016; Stier and Yaish 2008), and highly educated women incur a smaller motherhood penalty (Anderson, Binder, and Krause 2003). However, even after adjusting for work hours, experience, and education, the motherhood wage penalty remains (e.g., Budig and England 2001; Budig and Hodges 2010; England et al. 2016). One explanation offered for this residual penalty is employer discrimination, to which we now turn.

Employer Discrimination and the Public Sector

Evidence of employer discrimination against mothers is found in audit and experimental studies. Potentially contributing to maternal employment gaps, employers are less likely to interview and offer jobs to mothers, relative to non-mothers, and to indicate they believe mothers are less competent and committed to work than non-mothers (Benard and Correll 2010; Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007; Fuegen et al. 2004). With respect to the motherhood wage penalty, these studies find that employers make lower wage offers to mothers, relative to non-mothers (Benard and Correll 2010; Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007; Fuegen et al. 2004; Oesch, Lipps, and McDonald 2017).

Israeli legislation offers protection from employer discrimination based on ethno-religious group and motherhood status. However, anti-discrimination laws protecting Arab-speaking Israelis are rarely enforced (Mundlak 2008). And while laws against unequal treatment by motherhood status were enacted in 1988, it took 20 years to establish an equal employment opportunity commission. Moreover, implicit bias wherein mothers are rated lower on job-relevant characteristics persists, as the audit studies above document.

Anti-discrimination law enforcement is stronger in the public sector, which employs disproportionate numbers of ethno-religious minorities and mothers (Bental, Kraus, and Yonay 2017). Muslim and Christian women are largely segregated into the public sector, often within Israeli-Palestinian communities, whereas Jewish women work predominantly in the private sector (Bental, Kraus, and Yonay 2017). Women’s ethno-religious pay gaps are sharply decreased in the public sector: Whereas the Muslim–Jewish hourly pay gap is 65 percent in the private sector, it is only 7 percent in the public sector (Bental, Kraus, and Yonay 2017). Public-sector work within ethnic enclaves, where job competition is lower, enables Muslim women to achieve higher occupational statuses relative to the private sector and Jewish communities (Khattab 2002). Within the public sector, Muslim and Christian women are largely concentrated in education. This is important because, since 1993, mothers receive a 10 percent bonus, per the collective bargaining agreement between the teachers’ union and the Ministry of Finance (Histadrut Hamorim 2019). This suggests that a motherhood premium may be found among teachers in the public sector, and due to their high concentration into public-sector teaching occupations, the premium may accrue more strongly to ethno-religious minorities.

Work–Family Policies

Workplaces, workers, and employers are embedded in policy contexts that can alter the negative relationship between motherhood with employment and earnings. Work–family reconciliation policies support maternal employment, and Israel has been at the forefront of supportive work–family policies: Israel’s social policy framework has long recognized the importance of mothers’ caregiving and their rights to employment.

Maternal employment continuity is facilitated by accessible childcare: Countries with higher levels of publicly funded childcare for babies ages 0–2 years show higher rates of maternal full-time employment (Boeckmann, Misra, and Budig 2015) and smaller motherhood wage penalties (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2016; Gash 2009; Halldén, Levanon, and Kricheli-Katz 2016; Misra, Budig, and Boeckmann 2011; Sigle-Rushton and Waldfogel 2007). In Israel, universal mandatory education begins at 3 years (since 2016). Before this age, childcare is mostly provided by for- and nonprofit organizations, with governmental support provided through tuition subsidies for children enrolling in supervised facilities. While funding for childcare up to the age of 2 years is lower in Israel compared with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average (Vaknin 2020), usage is relatively high (Vaknin 2020). Jewish women have greater access to childcare and use it at higher rates, potentially reflecting the impact of several processes, including the underfunding of social and educational services in Israeli-Palestinian communities, as well as more acute financial burdens of childcare in remote rural localities, distrust of public institutions and differences in preference for care provided by family members (Knesset 2021; Kraus and Yonay 2018; Vaknin 2020).⁵

In contrast to accessible childcare, long (or no) leaves are associated with lower maternal employment and larger motherhood penalties (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2016). Lengthy leaves may activate employer discrimination in ways that affect pay. For example, a dramatic increase in parental leave length in Germany (from 18 months to 36 months) resulted in employers being more likely to assign women of childbearing age fewer creative and more codifiable tasks, compared with older women and compared with the shorter-leave era (Nivorozhkin and Romeu-Gordo 2019). This suggests that employers anticipate the cost to the organization of long maternity leaves and discriminate accordingly by segregating women into lower-paid work. In Israel, paid maternity leave for the studied timeframe was shorter at 14 weeks (extended to 15 weeks in 2017) with 100 percent wage replacement. Unpaid leave is available up to 1 year. Both leaves have existed since 1958, and currently women who worked at least 10 of 14 (or 15 of 22) months before childbirth are eligible for leave. Jewish women’s higher employment rates before a birth suggest greater access to leave surrounding motherhood, potentially aiding a faster return to work after a birth. Like the impact of long leaves, prior research also established that generous child income support results in a reduction in preferred working hours and overall labor force participation rates by mothers (Ferragina 2020; Pollmann-Schult 2016). The disincentivizing impact of child income support is potentially pronounced for women with lower levels of education (Pollmann-Schult 2016). However, such support was drastically cut in Israel in the early 2000s and is currently lower the OECD average, providing limited universalized support to all families (A. Levanon et al. 2019; OECD 2022).⁶ Hence, we expect its role to be limited.

Expectations

Drawing from the theoretical discussion, we delineate our expectations for ethno-religious group differences in postnatal employment and motherhood penalties. We first consider the impact of motherhood on employment. Having children is normative in Israel, and families with young children receive substantial state and extended family support (Berkovitch 1997; Kricheli-Katz, Mandel, and Kirya 2018). Hence, prior studies find small motherhood penalties in Israel (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2012; Herzberg-Druker 2014; Kricheli-Katz, Mandel, and Kriya 2018), but none of these have examined differences among ethno-religious groups. We expect to find variation among ethno-religious groups. High levels of residential segregation amplify ethno-religious group disparities in educational and employment opportunities, as well as access to and use of public childcare. Thus, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 1a (H1a): Ethno-religious groups will differ in motherhood’s impact on employment such that Jewish women will have shorter postnatal labor market absences, with Muslim women having the longest and Christian women falling in between.

Because educational attainment is associated with greater resources to purchase care replacements and greater labor market opportunities, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 1b (H1b): Education will shape postnatal employment, with more highly educated women evidencing shorter postnatal labor market absences.

Moreover, because Israeli-Palestinian women face greater barriers to employment, education may more strongly shape their postnatal employment opportunities. Thus, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 1c (H1c): The educational gradient in postnatal employment will be stronger among Israeli-Palestinian women, relative to Jewish women.

Our second set of expectations focuses on the motherhood wage penalty. Ethno-religious employment disparities favoring Jewish women suggest smaller motherhood penalties for Jewish women, relative to Israeli-Palestinians. However, Muslim mothers’ very low labor market participation suggests stronger selection into postnatal employment among Muslims, compared with Christians and Jews. If employed Muslim mothers have unmeasured time-varying characteristics that predict higher earnings (fixed-effects models control only for time-invariant omitted variables), this may result in smaller observed penalties among Muslims. Thus, we have no prediction for the relative size of motherhood penalties for Muslim women. We do expect the following:

Hypothesis 2a (H2a): Christian mothers will incur larger motherhood wage penalties compared with Jewish women.

With respect to education, highly educated women’s greater attachment to the labor market, combined with their higher wages (which can purchase childcare and domestic services), access to family-friendly workplaces, and stronger bargaining position vis-à-vis employers for pay negotiations, suggests they will incur smaller motherhood penalties, relative to less-educated women (Aisenbrey, Evertsson, and Grunow 2009; Budig and Hodges 2010; Smeaton 2006). Moreover, given the greater employment disadvantages Muslim women face, the moderating effect of education may be stronger among Muslims. Thus, we have two related expectations:

Hypothesis 2b (H2b): Motherhood wage penalties will be largest among the least educated, and smallest among the most highly educated, within all ethno-religious groups.

And,

Hypothesis 2c (H2c): The moderating effects of education will be largest among Muslim women.

Our third set of expectations considers the role of the public sector in shaping the ethno-religious group differences in postnatal employment gaps and the motherhood penalty. Because the public sector offers greater job protection, support for combining work and family, and even pay raises for teachers who give birth, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 3a (H3a)/Hypothesis 3b (H3b): Motherhood employment gaps/pay penalties will be smaller or even reversed in the public sector, relative to the private sector.

Moreover, due to the stronger enforcement of anti-discrimination labor laws in the public sector, we expect the following:

Hypothesis 3c (H3c)/Hypothesis 3d (H3d): Public-sector employment will attenuate motherhood employment gaps/wage penalties most strongly among Muslim women.

Method

Data

We use Israeli Census data to analyze a panel of Israeli-born women who were 10–21 years old in 1995 and followed annually until 2017 (CBS 2022b). Respondents are included in our analytical samples as of age 21, which excludes typical ages of secondary-school enrollment and military conscription.⁷ We matched annual data from the Ministry of the Interior, the Israeli Tax Authority, and the Council for Higher Education to the Census data. The resulting data set includes monthly fertility, employment, earnings records, and annual educational attainment. Our sample is 68,027 women, with 1,154,374 person-year observations. Attrition is minimal (2.4 percent) and missing data are rare (i.e., never exceeding 4 percent on any variable and generally lower than 2 percent) because administrative population records include individuals regardless of employment status. Given this, we dropped person-years with missing data rather than using imputation.

Our analytical sample for the event history models predicting the monthly hazard of postnatal employment includes all women, regardless of pre-birth employment status. We account for prenatal employment, assuming it is strongly associated with postnatal employment. The analytical sample for the fixed-effects earnings analysis is restricted to individuals with at least 2 years of observed wages. We include an indicator of selection into employment, estimated separately by ethno-religious group and year. It is the inverse Mills ratio calculated from a probit model regressing employment on age, age², education, marital status, peripherality index, and number of preschool children and estimated separately by ethno-religious group and year.

Variables

We analyze two dependent variables: (1) the hazard of postnatal employment (measured in months, with employment defined as receipt of wages), and (2) the natural log of monthly earnings, adjusted for inflation to reflect 1995 wages. The duration of postnatal labor market absence also serves as an independent variable in the earnings analyses.

The primary independent variables are ethno-religious group, number of children, and education. We include three ethno-religious groups: Jewish, Muslim, Christian.⁸ Number of children is measured with a set of dummy variables for zero (the reference category), one, two, and three or more. Educational attainment is measured with 3 dummy variables, indicating secondary education or less (the reference category), matriculation certificate (equivalent to a high school diploma), and postsecondary education.

Analyses include time-varying individual and labor market characteristics: age and age², marital status dummies (currently married, divorced, and widowed, with never married as the reference category), cumulative experience (months of labor market experience), months of labor market inactivity following a birth (regardless of prenatal employment status), average estimated weekly hours of work,⁹ and an indicator for the public sector (the economic sector group titled public social services). Although we account for the economic sector, our data lack occupational indicators, a limitation we consider in the discussion section. To account for local employment opportunities, we include socioeconomic standing of the locality of residence and a peripherality index reflecting the distance from the center of the country, as proxies for employment opportunities (CBS 1999; Tsibel 2009). Locality SES is a weighted index of locality characteristics, including demographic (e.g., median age), educational (e.g., the share who obtained a college degree), employment (e.g., share in the labor force), and living standards (e.g., mean income per capita). The peripherality index is an average of (1) the total distance from all other localities, weighted by the size of the locality and (2) the distance of each locality from the border of the Tel-Aviv district.

Methods of Analysis

We use two statistical methods to separately analyze ethno-religious group differences in employment after a birth and the motherhood wage penalty.

First, we analyze the duration of employment absence following a birth using Cox’s proportional hazard model (Allison 2014). We run models separately by parity and ethno-religious group. Estimated through maximum likelihood, these models allow us to include time-varying covariates. We present findings separately for each ethno-religious group and test for significant differences by ethno-religious group in pooled models. In this model, the hazard at time t for a subject is assumed to be

h (t) = h_{0} (t) \exp (β_{1} X_{1} + \dots + β_{k} k)

where k denotes the independent variables (e.g., X) and β indexes the regression coefficients.

Second, we analyze the impact of children on wages using fixed-effects models (Allison 2009) to reduce unmeasured heterogeneity on time invariant characteristics. We estimate models separately by ethno-religious group (cf. Glauber 2007) and include interactions between parity and education attainment. We include a selection term (described above). We test for differences across groups with pooled models. Specifically, the model is specified as follows:

Y_{i t} = β_{0} + \sum b_{k} X_{k i t} + ε_{i t},

where

ε_{i t} = u_{i} + v_{t} + w_{i t} .

In these models, Y is the yearly specific wage, i and t index individuals and years (respectively), k indexes the independent variables (e.g., X), b indexes the regression coefficients, and ε denotes the error term (with u as the cross-sectional individual component of the error, v as the temporal component to the error, and w as the purely random component of the error).

Results

Results are presented in three parts, always comparing the outcomes by ethno-religious groups and education. We begin with descriptive statistics, then present the event history analysis examining postnatal employment, and conclude with the fixed-effects analysis of the motherhood wage penalty.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics using 2017 data. Women’s employment rates, monthly earnings, educational attainment, and work experience are highest among Jews, followed by Christians and Muslims. Notably, the two Palestinian groups have reduced employment opportunities, as evidenced by living in lower locality SES and in more remote locations, and are more segregated into the public sector, relative to Jewish women.

Table 1:

Descriptive Statistics Israeli Women Born 1974–1985, by Ethno-Religious Affiliation (Standard Deviation in Parentheses)

Variable/group	Jewish	Muslim	Christian
Duration of postnatal labor market absence (1st birth)
Median length of absence from work (months)	4	23	5
Share who didn’t work by 6 months	35.7	65.1	45.1
Share who didn’t work by 12 months	21.2	57.6	33.6
Share who didn’t work by 18 months	16.0	52.9	28.1
Monthly income (in 1995 NIS)	6,072.38	3,837.36	4,808.88
	(3,933.67)	(2,605.28)	(3,002.43)
Currently employed	78.12	59.55	76.72
Children under 18
No children under 18	15.31	14.73	14.38
1 Child	11.59	8.24	13.08
2 Children	26.77	20.37	35.06
3+ Children	46.33	56.66	37.48
Marital status
Single	15.23	10.36	11.73
Married	76.19	82.49	83.44
Divorced/separated/widowed	8.58	7.14	4.83
Education
Secondary and less	31.31	49.38	29.99
Matriculation	17.94	19.77	26.99
Postsecondary	50.74	30.85	43.02
Work hours	37.86	35.58	36.99
	(4.59)	(4.55)	(4.27)
Months of experience	166.20	121.26	155.00
	(50.47)	(65.98)	(59.04)
Public-sector employment	42.43	56.70	51.80
Locality SES	0.44	−0.82	−0.17
	(.81)	(.6)	(.62)
Peripherality index	0.96	−0.04	0.05
	(1.1)	(.63)	(.89)
Age at first birth	27.75	23.61	25.85
	(4.54)	(4.07)	(4.24)
N (persons)	57,510	8,820	1,697

Source: Administrative data 2017 (CBS 2022b).

Note: For simplicity of presentation, calculations are based on information from the last year of our panel. Information reported in the table is calculated on all person-years regardless of employment status. Income is calculated only for employed individuals.

NIS = New Israeli Shekel; SES = Socio-Economic Status.

Muslim women have the highest fertility, followed by Jews and then Christians. Jewish and Christian women have shorter periods of postnatal employment inactivity (4 and 5 months, respectively), compared with Muslims (23 months). Muslim women are the most likely to remain non-employed at 18 months after a birth.

Postnatal Employment

Figure 1 shows descriptive findings from nonparametric Kaplan–Meier survival curves predicting employment following a birth, estimated separately by ethno-religious group and education.

Figure 1:

Kaplan–Meier Survival Curves Predicting Postnatal Employment After First Childbirth, by Ethno-Religious Affiliation and Education

Two main patterns emerge from Figure 1. First, consistent with expectation H1a, Jewish women become employed more quickly after a birth than Palestinian women, particularly Muslims. Second, education does not alter the rates of postnatal employment among Jewish women, in contradiction to H1b. Among Israeli-Palestinians, both H1b and H1c are supported: Educational attainment strongly shapes postnatal employment among Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Christians, with shorter postnatal labor market absences among the highly educated.

Table 2 presents Cox models predicting the percentage change in the hazard of employment following the first birth within each ethno-religious group. Data on ethno-religious group differences in predictors are bolded if significant (estimated from a pooled model with interacting predictors and ethno-religious group). Supporting H3a, public-sector employment is positively associated with postnatal employment, and this association is strongest for Muslims (consistent with H3c). Notably, locality SES is positively associated with postnatal employment for Christians, whereas closer proximity to urban centers correlates with Muslims’ greater postnatal employment, and both indicators are negatively associated with Jewish postnatal employment. Among Israeli-Palestinian women, these locality indicators may be associated with greater employment opportunities, whereas among Jewish women high SES locality and urban residences may signal rich communities wherein Jewish mothers tend to return to work more slowly (see Kraus and Yonay 2018).

Table 2:

Percent Change in the Predicted Hazard of Postnatal Employment, From Cox Proportional Hazards Models, by Ethno-Religious Group and Parity, Selected Characteristics

	Jews	Muslims	Christians
Marital status
Married	8.5***	−6	−8
Divorced	19.8***	39.4***	12
Widowed	−9.1	39.4*
Education
Matriculation	10***	56.4***	25.5***
Post-secondary	21.5***	160.2***	87.8***
Worked in public sector at least 1 month during the year before birth	21***	69.4***	44***
Local SES	−6.6***	1.8	12.3*
Peripherality Index	−1.2***	4.1*	−10.3***

Source: Administrative data, 1996–2017 (CBS 2022b).

Note: All models include age, age², months of experience, experience squared, and employment status in the year before birth. Bolded coefficients indicate that minority groups are significantly different from Jewish coefficients.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

SES = Socio-Economic Status.

Table A1 in the Online Appendix shows the results for all births. Findings for second and higher births are generally similar, though the educational gradient is weaker, and we find smaller differences between Jewish and Christian mothers of 3+ children. This latter difference is potentially attributable to the small number of Christians with 3+ children. In results not shown, we estimated a pooled model with interactions between ethno-religious group, number of children, and education. Results were consistent with those appearing in Table 2, with nonsignificant differences between Christian and Jewish women.

To summarize, Jewish women are employed more quickly and more often after a birth than Israeli-Palestinian women. For Jewish women, educational attainment plays a limited role in shaping employment reentry patterns, whereas among Israeli-Palestinians greater education dramatically increases their postnatal employment.

Motherhood Wage Penalty

The motherhood wage penalty is estimated with fixed-effects models regressing one, two, and three or more children on monthly earnings (with zero children as the reference category). To test hypotheses H2a, H2b, and H2c, we interact the child dummies with ethno-religious group and levels of education. Within each level of education, Figure 2 compares ethno-religious group differences in the motherhood penalty for two models: the baseline Model 1, controlling only for demographic measures (age, age², marital status, and year), and Model 2, adding covariates for work experience, postnatal labor market absence duration, predicted work hours, public-sector employment, locality SES, and peripherality index. Table A2 in the Online Appendix provides full results for Model 2.

Figure 2:

Percentage Earnings Change Associated With One, Two, and Three or More Children From Fixed-Effects Models, by Ethno-Religious Affiliation and Education

Model 1 reveals ethno-religious group and educational differences in the motherhood penalty. Consistent with H2b, we find that penalties decrease as education increases. At the lowest level of education, all groups experience significant motherhood penalties. Consistent with H2a, penalties are largest among Christians and smallest among Jews. At the medium level of education, we find penalties for Jews and Christians, though not for Muslims. Indeed, we observe small premiums for children among medium-educated Muslim women, and this stronger educational gradient among Muslims is consistent with H2c. At the highest educational level, we observe weak child penalties for Jews and Christians (except for 3+ children among Christians) and child bonuses among Muslims.

Adding covariates to Model 2 significantly attenuates penalties and increases premiums for motherhood.¹⁰ Among the least-educated women, the motherhood penalty falls by 49–98 percent of the baseline penalties. Similarly, at medium education, no motherhood penalty remains among Jews and the residual penalty decreases among Christians. At the highest educational level, we find no penalties and, rather, observe motherhood premiums among all ethno-religious groups. The highest premium is observed among the Muslims, while the lowest premium is found among Christians. The finding of motherhood premiums among the highly educated is consistent with the findings of Doren (2019) and Halldén, Levanon, and Kricheli-Katz (2016). Similarly, Budig and Hodges (2014) find motherhood wage premiums among the women in the top 10 percent women’s earnings distribution. Parallel to Budig and Hodges (2014), we find that the motherhood premium among highly educated women increases with higher parities. Perhaps this is an “income effect” wherein highly educated women pursue higher wages to provide for the greater care demands of larger families.¹¹

Consistent with past research, the effects of children are explained largely through the indicators of theoretical mechanisms introduced in Model 2; this is true for all ethno-religious groups at every educational level. To discern the relative strength of these mechanisms in accounting for child effects on pay, Table A3 in the Online Appendix presents a sensitivity analysis where we introduce Model 2 predictors one at a time. We find that work experience, postnatal labor market absence duration, and predicted work hours strongly explain the motherhood penalty.^12,13 In results not shown, we estimated predicted earnings by the length of postnatal labor force absence and education for each ethno-religious group. Although we found no association between inactivity duration and earnings for Muslim women, we observed a negative association among Jewish and Christian women, particularly for the highest educated. Thus, for Jewish and Christian women, shorter postnatal breaks in employment are associated with higher earnings. The null association found among highly educated Muslims may result from their extreme overrepresentation as schoolteachers whose labor contract secures their position and earnings regardless of the length of their maternity leave.¹⁴

Role of the Public Sector

We next consider the protective role that public-sector employment plays in labor outcomes for the Israeli-Palestinians (e.g., Bental, Kraus, and Yonay 2017). Table 2 shows that prenatal public-sector employment positively predicted postnatal employment, consistent with H3a. Moreover, consistent with H3c, public sector’s impact on postnatal employment was stronger for Israeli-Palestinians, particularly Muslims. To elaborate, Table A4 in the Online Appendix shows the distribution of women ages 35–40 years across four leading industries within sector, disaggregated by ethno-religious group, motherhood status, and educational attainment. Table A4 shows public-sector work is more common for Israeli-Palestinians, mothers, and the highly educated, relative to Jews, the childless, and the less educated. Impressively, 88 percent of highly educated Muslim mothers are in the public sector, relative to 78 percent of Christian mothers and 49 percent of Jewish mothers. Moreover, highly educated Muslim mothers are profoundly segregated (63 percent) into the education sector, compared with 26 percent of highly educated Jewish women. As we noted earlier, teachers receive pay increases for motherhood, and the prevalence of highly educated Muslim women in this sector may be associated with the child premiums we observed.

We expected (H3b) that the public sector would show smaller motherhood penalties and strongly support Muslims mothers’ pay. To investigate the association between motherhood and the public sector, Figure 3 builds on Model 2 from Figure 2 by including three-way interactions among the number of children, educational attainment, and employment sector. For all ethno-religious groups, we observe motherhood penalties for less-educated women. Penalties are significantly smaller in the public sector for Jewish women, though not for Muslim or Christian women. Among the highly educated, we observe larger motherhood bonuses in the public sector, relative to the private sector, and these become significantly larger at higher parities. Highly educated Muslim women working in the public sector receive the largest motherhood premiums, relative to all other groups. Many of the observed child premiums in Figure 2 for highly educated Muslim and Christian women are linked to their location in the public sector; their private-sector counterparts receive smaller or no premiums for children.

Figure 3:

Percentage Earnings Change Associated With One, Two, and Three or More Children From Fixed-Effects Models, by Ethno-Religious Affiliation and Sector of Employment.

To summarize, education and public-sector structure the effects of children on pay across ethno-religious groups. Less-educated women incur steeper child penalties, whereas highly educated women can receive child premiums. This suggests a strong class gradient in the motherhood penalty/premium and reflects the precarity of less-educated women with respect to family effects on employment outcomes. Our analysis reveals the potential for education to reduce both family status and ethno-religious disparities. Sector employment strongly shapes the impact of motherhood on earnings among ethno-religious groups, and particularly among Muslims. The high segregation of Israeli-Palestinians into the public sector creates more positive earnings outcomes for minority mothers.

Discussion

Israel is a paradoxical country, with high rates of fertility and marriage, along with high rates of women’s educational attainment and employment. Its pronatalist history and supportive work–family policies, combined with strong ethno-religious inequality in employment and wages, offered a novel opportunity to compare motherhood’s effects across social locations. Whereas past work found smaller motherhood penalties in Israel, ours is the first longitudinal study examining variation by ethno-religious group and education. Our intersectional approach revealed which women experience steeper penalties and the conditions under which penalties are attenuated.

Relative to Jews, children strongly deter women’s employment among Muslims and Christians. This is consistent with past findings of high and stable levels of Jewish women’s market participation (Kraus 2002; Stier, Lewin-Epstein, and Braun 2001) and documented barriers to labor market participation for Israeli-Palestinian mothers, including employer discrimination and limited access to childcare services and public transportation (Kraus and Yonay 2018). The strong negative impact of children on Muslim women’s employment may reflect structural and cultural factors (Sa’ar 2017): Muslims are more likely to live in remote communities with fewer job opportunities, poor public transportation, and little accessible childcare. Moreover, Muslim women receive low wages and experience discrimination. These challenges to employment may be amplified by cultural norms encouraging direct care of mothers for children, which is more common for women with lower educational attainment. Importantly, we found a significant educational gradient among Israeli-Palestinian women with respect to maternal employment. Higher education reduces the length of postnatal labor market inactivity among Muslims and Christians.

Prior research shows that Christians are also disadvantaged in many of these factors relative to Jews. However, relative to Muslim women, Christians have higher educational attainment and access to urban area job opportunities. These advantages, combined with smaller family sizes, might explain their smaller motherhood employment gaps. Taken together, results suggest that highly educated Israeli-Palestinian mothers, along with Jewish mothers, may have better resources to afford combining family and work roles.

Considering the motherhood wage penalty, we found that the least-educated women incur the steepest penalties. While lower experience and longer durations of postnatal labor market inactivity explain a large portion of these penalties, child penalties persist among the least-educated women net of these factors. Motherhood penalties also persist among medium-educated Jewish and Christian women, though postnatal labor market absence fully explains Jewish women’s penalties. We do not find motherhood penalties for medium-educated Muslims and find no net motherhood penalties among the highly educated women of any ethno-religious group. On the contrary, we find wage premiums for motherhood among the highly educated; this lack of penalty and appearance of premiums parallels findings from the United States for college-educated women who delay motherhood past the age of 35 (Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2005; Doren 2019) and women in the top 10 percent of women’s earning distribution (Budig and Hodges 2014). Consistent with past studies, we find that more highly educated women maintain more continuous employment around a birth, particularly among Muslims and Christians. More strikingly, we find ethno-religious differences in motherhood premiums for highly educated women, with Muslim women showing net premiums of 23 percent for two or more children.

Our investigation of how sector of employment shapes ethno-religious differences in motherhood’s effect on employment and earnings was revelatory. The public sector affords stronger employment protections and support for combining work and family (Kraus and Yonay 2018); thus, we unsurprisingly found that prenatal public-sector employment positively predicted postnatal employment more strongly for Israeli-Palestinians, particularly Muslims. Although we lack occupational data, disaggregating the public sector by industry showed that 88 percent of highly educated Muslim mothers are in the education sector, suggesting that many are teachers. With respect to the motherhood penalty and less-educated workers, public-sector employment (relative to the private sector) showed significantly smaller motherhood penalties among Jews and Muslims, though not among Christians. For the highly educated, public-sector employment was associated with higher premiums for two and three or more children for all ethno-religious groups. Teachers’ unique pay raises for giving birth may contribute to the child premiums we observe, particularly among Muslims.

Yet we also observe wage premiums among medium- and highly educated Jewish and Muslim women in the private sector, though not among Christians. These premiums were somewhat larger for Muslims. Unobserved selection on omitted time-changing variables may contribute to these child premiums. Alternatively, highly educated mothers in the private sector might command higher wages and approach motherhood more similarly to how men approach fatherhood, by emphasizing economic provision (Hodges and Budig 2010). For example, pursuing higher earnings may enable more highly educated women to replace their caregiving and other unpaid domestic work with market services and secure better education and enrichment opportunities for their children. Finally, highly educated women may be better positioned to bargain for higher wages and family-friendly amenities with private-sector employers, compared with less-educated mothers (Bental, Kraus, and Yonay 2017).

Our findings suggest fruitful directions for future research in Israel. Despite our findings of minimal motherhood penalties and even premiums among highly educated Israeli women, the Israeli gender wage gap (23 percent) is greater than the OECD average (OECD 2021). While much of the gender gap in other countries is attributable to differential effects of parenthood on men’s and women’s wages, our findings suggest that other sources of gender disparities may matter in Israel. Alternatively, as Kricheli-Katz, Mandel, and Kriya (2018) argue, Israel’s pattern of nearly universal motherhood may lead employers to assume that all women are (potential) mothers with competing non-work responsibilities. Thus, employers may discriminate against (potential) caregivers simply based on gender, regardless of motherhood status. Further research is needed to disentangle the effects of parenthood and other factors contributing to the Israeli gender pay gap.

We note our study’s limitations: Our data lack several important measures, including occupation, work hours, foreign degrees, and employer data. Hence, we are unable to examine how occupational characteristics, mothers’ use of part-time employment, and employer discrimination shape motherhood’s effects on employment and earnings. We also undercount tertiary educational degrees for those obtained outside of Israel (though only 6–7 percent of Israelis obtain their degree abroad) (UNESCO 2021). Our panel is not balanced in that women at the younger end of our cohort have fewer person-years represented. However, this does not differ by ethno-religious group or educational level and should not affect the broad dynamics we observe.

Conclusion

Our findings have policy implications for reducing inequality-related motherhood. First, educational attainment is associated with postnatal employment continuity and motherhood wage penalties within and across ethno-religious groups. We found that vulnerable workers—ethno-religious minorities and the least educated—incur longer employment interruptions and labor force exits, resulting in high economic costs for childbearing. Thus, efforts to increase educational attainment may reduce mothers’ employment disparities overall, particularly for Muslims and Christians. The positive association between locality SES and Israeli-Palestinian women’s employment suggests that improving economic and employment opportunities in Muslim and Christian communities could lower the negative impacts of motherhood on Israeli-Palestinians’ employment. Our finding that public-sector employment supports Israeli-Palestinian mothers’ employment and pay, potentially due to its stronger employment protections and support for combining work and family (Kraus and Yonay 2018), suggests that ensuring enforcement of employment protections in the private sector and equitable access across ethno-religious groups to work–family benefits may further reduce ethno-religious gaps related to motherhood and work.

Despite past findings of limited motherhood penalties in Israel (Budig, Misra, and Boeckmann 2012; Herzberg-Druker 2014; Kricheli-Katz, Mandel, and Kriya 2018), applying intersectionality theory to examine ethno-religious group differences with respect to motherhood illuminates the complexity associated with motherhood in Israel, as elsewhere. These locations—defined by ethno-religious group, educational attainment, and sector of employment—greatly matter for Israeli motherhood penalties. Our findings show that there is no “one story” of limited motherhood penalties in Israel. Furthermore, there is no one Jewish, Muslim, or Christian story of motherhood penalties, either. Between and within ethno-religious groups, motherhood’s effects on employment and pay are variously increased, diminished, and even reversed the depending on educational attainment and sector of employment. An intersectional approach to the study of parenthood and work paints a clearer and nuanced picture of motherhood’s impacts on diverse women’s employment and pay, and reveals opportunities for targeted interventions to disrupt these inequitable outcomes.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-gas-10.1177_08912432231155913 – Supplemental material for Israeli Ethno-Religious Differences in Motherhood Penalties on Employment and Earnings

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-gas-10.1177_08912432231155913 for Israeli Ethno-Religious Differences in Motherhood Penalties on Employment and Earnings by Michelle J. Budig, Vered Kraus and Asaf Levanon in Gender & Society

Footnotes

Authors’ Note:

This research was supported by a grant from the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation.

ORCID iD

Michelle J. Budig

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Michelle J. Budig is a professor of sociology and senior vice provost at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research has focused on labor market inequalities, wage penalties for paid and unpaid caregiving, work–family policy, and nonstandard employment. Her research has appeared in American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal of Marriage and the Family, and numerous other professional journals.

Vered Kraus was an Emerita professor of sociology at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her work focused on social stratification and inequality, especially gender and ethnic inequality in the labor market. She published several books and articles, including Facing Barriers: Palestinian Women in a Jewish-Dominated Labor Market, Promises in the Promised Land: Mobility and Inequality in Israel, and Secondary Breadwinners: Israeli Women in the Labor Market.

Asaf Levanon is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and the head of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Poverty and Social Exclusion at the University of Haifa. Building on social stratification research and life course scholarship, his work examines how institutions affect life-course outcomes. His work has appeared in American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Methods and Research, Social Science Research, and other professional journals.

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